European Parliament to Vote on TTIP Resolution

Following a debate on Jul. 7, the plenary session of the European Parliament (EP) is to take a vote on the international trade committee’s recommendations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) on Jul. 8.

A vote on the treaty being negotiated by the EU and the US, originally scheduled for Jun. 9, was postponed and referred back to committee to buy time to deal with more than 200 complaints against the legislation and proposed amendments.

In the meantime, it seems that a compromise may be possible, member Bernd Lange, chair of the trade committee and responsible for drafting the Parliament's recommendations, said in a talk with the EP’s daily bulletin.

“In our resolution we make very clear that specific European values, specific European traditions, are not included in the TTIP agreement,” Lange said, pointing to such topics as cultural diversity, public services or the creation of measures to protect data flow or data protection.

“We make sure that the possibility to legislate European issues by European policy bodies is still there and should not be influenced by any trade agreement,” he added.

Commenting on concerns about the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), at its inception a private system to resolve disputes between investors and countries, Lange remarked that the EP had “already clarified that private arbitration is an instrument of the past and it is not foreseen by the Parliament anymore as an alternative in trade agreements.” However, in the June draft “it was not worded clearly enough.”

“Now it is clear,” Lange said, “that ISDS has to be replaced by a public court. We need publicly appointed judges, we need a clear European mechanism and we need a public codex of the court.”